I Lost $500 Worth Of Fish With RO Water 

Thanks!

You look confused and you confuse people . RO water is the best water but it has to be mineralized before put in the tank . Any water changes ( except emergency ) should be done gradually let say 10% every day .

First thing if you want to use RO or RODI water is to know about water chemistry(kH, gH, pH). Once you understand that, you have to know your tap water chemistry and the species you are keeping. So when you want to modify your water parameters you do it gradually.

I used remineralised RO for a few years which I got from my LFS. When lockdown started last year I had a few week's worth of RO left and that was it, fish shops were shut. I started gently weaning them back onto tap water, but I feared my tank was doomed as I'd been lead to believe my water was too hard for the species I keep, and that's what had killed my first lot way back in 2016. My first fish had died 6 months after I'd set the aquarium up with tap water so I emotionally prepared myself to lose them all in 6 months...and I didn't happen. I've learned to love my patches of algea- my shrimp and 'hitchhiker' snails do too! 😁 Just goes to show you can read as much and talk to as many fish keepers as you like but personal observations are the best teacher.

Such a critical lesson! Great video

You just saved me in buying a RODI system... Thank you very much for how detailed the video was. I will stick to just using a regulator like Seachem Neutral Regulator (My pH tap water is pushing between 7.6-7.8 and I need it to be 7.0).

Excellent video! I fill my buckets with 2/3 water from our faucets, then I sit them on my deck and collect rain water. A ten percent water change, and all works well.

Yep gotta re-mineralize RO water. I use RO for the last thing you stated in the video. Clean slate. I can get out the KH I dont want and remineralize to my target 20ppm calcium 7ppm magnesium 6GH and no KH for plants. Also when I keep fish/shrimp in the future I plan on multiple tanks of varying GH/KH depending on the fauna I'm keeping. I do know this for a fact : My plants are way happier not using my tap. Just my opinion (I'm more rare type plant focused) keeping plants that dont do well with KH.

i really appreciate you sharing your story, this was one of my fears about RO water, i was thinking of installing a system to help my girlfriend with water changes but im not sold and you gave me the information to decide not to. thanks very much! best regards Tim, colorado

Another good video Dan. I use RO-DI water that I carefully buffer and remineralize only because I have questionable tap water due to old pipes. I also add trace minerals back in. The only issue RO water would solve is the trace nitrates in your ground/tap water. I've not noticed a reduction in algae nor cyano (the few times I've dealt with it) by using RO water, but then I would never use straight RO for the reasons you stated. I can't image straight RO being healthy for any fish, even discus. The one advantage of RO-DI water is complete control over your source water, but its more work and expense. And if one doesn't like to use a test kit, its not advised.

Seachem equilibrium and their acid/alkaline buffers are what I use for my RODI water. No algae and all animals do so well

We used to have an RO system similar to yours, but it quit on us after 4 years so we switched to distilled water. I only make distilled water when we need it, I use it mostly for my Navage and my CPAP machine. I have used it occasionally in my fish tanks, but not often.

I looked up those Plecos, and boy that must've been rough to lose them. Absolutely gorgeous look fish.

Great video 💪💪💪

Great video Do I need a reverse osmosis machine for discus fish or can I use tap water with a water conditioner additive?

Did you remineralize with seachem, acid and alkaline buffers? gh/kh test and a final tds test?

RO is good for a shrimp only tank to re-mineralize it to the exact spec of the shrimps you would be keeping. I also notice if you have around 200 TDS you can basically keep almost all freshwater fish in your tank. Since the water is in a neutral.

Im glad I saw this I ordered an Ro system it comes tomorrow,,, I always had good well water but the last big rain storm raised my ph over what the master test kit reads and I didn’t find out till I did my regular water changes and lost about 20 fish ,,,, what’s the best thing I could use to make safe aquarium water?

Thanks great info!

I RODI use it for my emerged misting system and i will usually put in the reservior Cal Mag Plus with iron and some easy green for the mist. Also use it for my top off of fish tubs. It works great to clean your solar panels as that is what the professionals use. I would also think it is a must with shrimp. i will not drink it though. I know that some people day it is the best. I suppose it would also be great for washing windows.

hey, hope this isn't too personal, but you can see the weight loss! You are doing awesome, man. Keep it up!

People who successfully use RO water will remineralize it using something like Seachem Equilibrium alongside a buffering substratre, typically aquasoil. Like you apty pointed out, the elecrolytes are necessary. It's the same thing for drinking water. You actually don't want to drink pure water, you want minerals or electrolytes in there. The whole point of using RO water is if you have a lot of stuff in your tap water outside of simple hardness.

This is a very good discussion and really hits the nail on the head during your second half of the video. It is a topic that is incredibly dependent on what water chemistry you start with, and what your tank biology requires. What it does: RO/DI systems take water back to neutral, and creates a foundation to change water parameters. Such as pH, salinity, or hardness. In my freshwater system, I only run RO/DI as evaporation top off; and it's tied to an auto-top-off. This is because only water evaporates, any salts, minerals or dissolved organics stay behind. So by topping off with RO, you're not introducing the possibility of an unknown compound building up or swinging your parameters over time. It's not a critical step if you do abundant water changes, but I have a heavily planted system that can go months between water changes; so what's introduced during top off can matter. On the other hand, my reef tank only used RO/DI water with a salt mix. And it to was again topped off with RO/DI as to not swing the salinity. It is a capability best used as a foundation and built upon to reach stable chemistry. But you're absolutely correct that it shouldn't be used stand-alone as the sole water source without a form of mineralization.

Super awesome video Dan at the end of the day fish are just like people full of micro organisms…. We recently acquired some vampire pleco‘s they have been living in Jack’s Bridge tank and will be going into the new tank we are working on in the dining room they are gorgeous…. We are hoping they are a pair but not sure yet time will tell….Have a great evening

Would like to hear about the Nitrate removal from your tap water. Good story thanks for sharing!

You raised a great point regarding nitrates. It's very easy for new hobbyists to panic at 20ppm of nitrates out of the tap. It's slightly different for me as my UK water is rock hard and has 50ppm from the tap so I do use RODI but I cut it with my tap water to hit parameters that suit my discus & angels. I don't use buffers or magic powders as that's too much alchemy for me.

More and more people are having great success with discus in straight tap.

Can always add a blending valve to your r.o and have it produce water at water tds level you wish...

Yup. I also learned this the hard way a long time ago. 😬😬

I started in with RO around 20 years back when I started keeping Discus, as I was also told it was a must. But only by happenstance did I not kill $750 worth of Discus, because I had no idea about remineralizing water. The crazy “seven layer dip” substrate I was also using saved me (I later learned). Never had a clearer tank or better plant growth though, and Discus bred like mad in a community tank with no help from me. Reverted back to city tap for a decade, but algae problems would not subside. So back to RO/DI again, but properly remineralizing with Equilibrium and Seachem buffers for KH and pH. Bit of extra chemistry, but algae is disappearing.

I thought this was a recent thing, I was so scared

I use RO water for drinking, cooking and topping of evaporated water from my aquarium. Never for water changes, I've learned that the hard way too. Sea salt and Himalayan pink salt have about 80-90 trace minerals. Would you consider these salts for adding trace minerals to a freshwater aquarium?

Love your Snakeskin Gourami, & your Rainbows, especially the Bosmanis (they were the 2nd egg layer I bred) sorry about your RO water incident, it happens to the best of us. RO is for topping up, not water changes... unless you remineralize it 1st (which is what Caridina Shrimp Keepers do)

Equal Librium helps with to h20?, Electrolytes is what Salt correct? I do use distilled with fry

RO water is demineralized. It's a clean canvas on which you add proper minerals.

RO water is great for plant and fish only tanks for the exact same reason as brackish and saltwater tanks and for the very same reasons that you mentioned. My water parameters fluctuate like crazy straight out of the tap. One water change I would be putting 6.2 ph water into my tank then next time it could be 7.4. I would NEVER put straight RO water into my tank though like you were saying. I doubt that’s what the discus keeper was saying.

I use pure RO water. I agree that it isn’t necessary in all scenarios but I find it more flexible. I have well water as well and I more or less use RO water as a precaution because of my well water parameters changing. As long as you use a product like Seachem Equallibrium to add the hardness back and a product like Sechem Alkaline Buffer to build up your KH there is nothing wrong with RO or distilled water. As far as it “fixing” problems I am not really sure how people came to the conclusion that RO water or distilled water would solve problems such as algae. Like I said my use case for RO water is purely a precaution and it allows me to maintain stability because I can control the parameters of the water I am adding back in to make sure there isn’t going to be any drastic changes in the water like you may see with tap water. It also allows me to aim for the exact parameters I want.

Thanks for the explanation! Sorry you lost those fish, sad when you're attached to them like me to mine for the most part. I picked up 2 pearl gourami and they're in my 20 gallon until the new 40 gallon is ready. I noticed my ph. is what I'm told too high at 7.6 so I did look into mixing in some RO but then I'm sure they would rather have a consistent hardness rather than the fluctuations I would introduce mixing until I get the numbers correct. I thought of adding peat pellets, I'm not into tannins but I'll do it so they're at their best. Neons don't do that well in my tanks so I'm worried about the Gourami. Do you think the peat pellets will lower ph. enough to be worth it? Thanks.

Wonderful.

I have had fish tanks for 2 years now and have used nothing but RO water the whole entire time. Have never had any fish loss or any problems with it keeping bettas, cory's, nerite snails, and shrimp. I've never added anything into the water either except just a few months ago started adding banquet blocks for calcium for the snails I got. Just straight RO water no additives.

Thanks I was going to start up a tank for discus with ro water well I guess I won’t I will test my tap water after it sits for a couple days to take out the choline ✌️👍🇨🇦🙏

I used RO/DI for years, I mix it 50/50 with tap water to get all the minerals and soft water I need. I dont understand your prejudice against it. RO/DI is the easiest way to get soft water. I guess you needed a topic to make a video.

any equipment beyond a dechlorinator, filter, and heater is just playing with your fish life in my opinion. If you water is that unforgiven, you need to choose the fish that can live in that water parameter. No tap water anywhere is so bad that you cant find a fish that fit that water if it is that bad you probably should call your city to ask wtf are they doing with the water you use.

Years ago, I was heavily into true blackwater/peat swamp species like Parosphromenus and wild Betta ... you CAN use pure RO/rainwater and these fish will thrive. My Tonnina fluviatilis did splendid in RO water with a pH below 5. So saying that NO fish and no algae/plant can grow and live in this environement is not true - but you are right if you want to express that MOST of the fish and plants we keep would not do too great in this kind of a tank. You also have to understand that a) there a more variables that stabilize your ph than just dissolved carbonates if that was the issue (like humic substances) and b) fish will also take in minerals/salts through their diet. What most likely killed your fish was the difference in osmotic pressure ... going from hard to soft is generally a lot more demanding on the organism and should be done slowly - or, depending on your filtration, if you ran a heavy anoxic filtration, a complete depletion of carbonate resulting in a heavy ph crash (which would be a VERY rare consequence). At the end of the day, it is the species you keep which dictates what water you want to use, given you want to create the best possible living conditions for your fish - if you are in the mid range of water hardiness and simply want to enjoy the look of an aquarium ... for the most part, your are golden. Breeding might be a different beast, though - and if you are into certain plants ... a lot of them will either benefit from softer water (nutrients become better accessible in a slightly more acidic, soft water environment) or even might require it - while others will demand harder water. The beauty of RO is that if you have liquid concrete coming out of your sink you are not limited anymore in what you can or cannot keep - if you do a little bit of research you can tailor the water according to your needs using suppliments like salt, water conditioners and humic additives. What are your tap water parameters? What kind of filtration was used? Did the temperature differ? Was there an established water change regime prior to the exchange? Was water conditioner used? In some areas you can experience chlorine spikes which may effect your fish. Also possible: Did you clean out your reservoir before using it? Sometimes you have some after production residue lingering around. How long did it take for the fish to pass away and HOW did they die, exactly? You got quite some viewer range on your channel. You used it to talk about a mistake ... which is a rather beautiful thing, so others may learn from it and have a better experience in the future. BUT you "failed" (me personally, as a viewer) by not digging deeper into it to figure out what exact mistake you made - a missed opportunity, both for your personal growth and your viewers.

I’ve kept fish n some very expensive ones for 25 years with tap water using the likes of prime n safe . I’ve never chased water testing n no dream as I feel people try to hard.

This video should be titled: “How NOT to use RO water”

I pretty much did the same thing. Oh the guilt!!!! Although my TDS is high, it is largely GH. Playing with RO dropped my KH too much and sent my pH too low. Plants and fish sacrificed. 😨 I am learning to keep an eye on kH and pH. If I am doing a water change, I just go with tap. Top off? I test my kH and pH and that determines whether or not a do an RO blend. If I top off with tap, after a while I can get insane TDS. I did learn that Annubia will forgive. It was a horrible learning experience.

Hi What’s the name of that float switch you have that fits to the small pipe work? I’ve been trying to find one myself with no luck thx

It could have also been from your well water and not the RO.. I have mainly used well water but then one day I did a 15 gallon water change in my 140 gallon saltwater aquarium and all my fish were dying within no time! All but 2 lived. My friends all use RO water and never had a problem. So now I bought an RO system from Bulk Reef Supply.

I Use RO with reminilizer but only on my small 14g shrimp and snail tank i have high copper in my water kills the poor things, but on my 75g i just use regular tap water only fish live in it snail and shrimp died in their within a week or 2

I use rodi water for my nano reef tank night and day difference 0ppm vs 254ppm for my freshwater tanks I just use tap water

I don't have much choice but to use RO/DI water. The stuff coming out of my tap has a TDS of 4700, it comes from a desalination plant which seems to barely function. I also have a well but even that has a TDS of 1200 - 1700 depending on the time of year. I pass my well water through the RO/DI and it still has TDS of 70-80. Doing a 50% water change on a tank with TDS of 400 still only brings it down to around 230.

Why is no one talking about that beautiful angel fish

I have RO/DI water but your points are super valid. It's a pain in the dick. You have to dose it with remineralizing buffers and put your trace minerals for fish in with it too. Tbh, probably not worth it unless you live in super shitty areas where environmental toxins are a thing. For me, it was a waste of money. I still use it tho.

If you put your blood cells in RO water they will burst. The irony here is that your fish likely died due a phenomenon based on osmosis, the same principle used in obtaining that water. In order to use RO water successfully you need to add the proper mineral composition to it, which allows a living creature to create the adequate internal environment for its own cells.

I rather stick to my deep deep substrate to reduce nitrates and I would rather water with minerals

I refill my evaporated water with distilled. Separate from any water changing.

If you are concerned about water waster for RO units I suggest not buying a "cheap" one I bought my first RO for like $225cad and it wasted about at a 7:1 and the media did not last all that long in it. I was using it for hydro growing plants so I was using upwards of 20gallons a day. So I just got a really good hydro focused unit that was about $700cad that filters 5 times faster and with only a 2:1 water waste the unit also can be changed to a 1:1 waste but it is not recommended with harder water, now this unit can do about 180 gal per day off mains pressures twice that if you have a pressure pump. I realize this is a huge overkill for most aquarium people, but if you pay a lot for water or keep a lot of fish it may be worth it to you. also I have had it for 4 years now and the only maintenance I have done is rinse the pre filter once and it is still giving me 2-4 ppm water.

Is that a red tail giant gourami in the big tank?? How old is it?

We all been there

They have been closing ponds around me for that Cyanobacteria

Use bulk reef ro system it’s a safe ro system then other ro systems

Firstly, beautiful tank. Absolutely stunning. Secondly, RO water didn’t kill your fish. Your lack of knowledge on how to remineralise it killed the fish. You produce the RO, add back the minerals to the right level.

Ro water must be remineralized. They make several of them depending what your keeping. I used 0tds for top offs on planted community tanks and I use 0tds to bring down my tds from tds creep in caridina tanks. Something else went on here. I dont think the ro water killed your fish. I think it was something in your tap and something on your hands like round up or flea medication. If you dumped a whole lot of rodi woth no tap water coming in and not usimg Remineralizer then maybe and then it depends how fast that change was as in was it dumped in or slow drip. Something just sounds off here. I used 0tds rodi in many tanks weekly and never experienced die off. Its a great addiction to aquatic life but you must know what you can and cant do with it. Its not rocket science.

Maybe part of it is the language we use. “I’ve only used ro water in my 7 tanks, severems, rainbows, hobby’s, shrimp…for the past 3 years”. But I’ve never used ONLY ro water, by itself. I’ve never heard of that unless it’s an oversight/forgot to remineralize. That I’ve heard of. The assumption is that I’m remineralizing. Even though we don’t always add that part. Slightly different depending on tank…but basic principle is liq gh remineralizer and I use crushed coral in filter and/substrate. Very simple and duplicatable. Easy enough to test to make sure crushed coral is still playing it’s role, gh remineralizer I’ve learned to usually use half dose due to having crushed coral present as well. My municipal water has high levels of chlorine, chloramine, fluoride, and other stuff. And they can vary greatly. It’ll always be “safe” to drink in terms of preventing human illness but it’s not great for fish…my perspective based on reading allot, that’s all. Yes people in my area certainly keep nice fish by treating our tap water. I enjoy the process of trying to create healthier fish vs using our tap water. Wanna see fish die in water really fast if you don’t treat it…that my tap water.

I use RO water, I get algae. But, it’s the first time that my algae is green instead of brown.

My water come out around 500 ppm. after r/o .065

Same thing happened with me... :(

I have always heard that pure RO is also bad for humans. It makes sense. Pure RO drinking water will cause further osmosis within the human body. The body will dump minerals and salts in a natural phenomenon, trying to move toward a balanced, neutral state. I am glad I checked your video out as I was entertaining an RO system myself.

This video melted my brain. If you're doing rodi then don't half ass do it. Your rodi should be 0-1 ppm or you got a trash can rodi system. Then remineralize to the likings of fish using salty shrimp or APT Sky. It will be tricky at first to slowly change your whole tank to rodi*remineralized water but once chamged over and you got your parameters right then it's smooth sailing ..

This looks expensive

You’re supposed to re-mineralize RODI water before putting it in your aquarium, whether it’s fresh or brackish.

I stand by u on this. I've never used ro water and never will

Can’t believe you did you research after, everyone knows you have the mineralise, jez, poor fish

The issue was you didn’t age your RO and tap water together for at least 24 hours. You adding half RO and half tap directly into the tank without again it caused a huge ph swing. That’s what killed your fish.

if it aint broke dont fix it

hello, i got a message on seafox but was unable to reply?

RO water is used for saltwater or brackish water tanks. Unless you are using water that is near mining and has heavy metals in the runoff in your water supply, then you'd use RODI. I am surprised no one told you you had to remineralize your water once purified.

it seems the issue isn't RO water, it's the fact you didn't remineralize it and just dumped 0 GH/0KH water in.

It is absolutely pure water! H20 + CO2 = H2CO3. The more pure the source of water is, the more CO2 it can absorb, and the more acidic it will get. Reverse osmosis and distillation both produce nearly pure water, so both forms of water will readily turn acidic when exposed to air. Pure water is unstable ph wise. Adding minerals and stuff will also make the ph unstable but much less so. Probably need a deeper understanding of how thing work, softening water has its own issues. Like adding salts. No you really don’t know what you are doing, and killed many fish. Don’t let pride do it again! Study man….

lol throw the mineralized RO waste into a guppy or an African cichlid tank 😂😂😂 (JOKING)

Why not just mix it with tap water to remineralize it, instead of spending money on buffering

Lol y is your thumb blue 😂

Did you check the paramiters of your well water before you used ro? Did you think though what you were trying to accomplish or just used ro because everybody said it's best? It probably wasn't ro that killed your fish, it was your unconcearn that did it. If you are to change water parameters in your tank you do it gradually, not just waltz in and pour 75% of the water out, and fill it with new water. Most fish are fine in wide spectrum of parameters and if you only used 33% ro water the fish would probably be fine in it if you just changed the water gradually. When you changed it so rapidly the fish were in a shock - you changed gh, kh, temperature, and most importantly - ph. Fish in stress produce a lot more ammonia, and I believe that is what killed them. When you say that ro water is dangerous and nothing can live in it, just because you did sth wrong, you do harm to ppl that are new to the hobby. RO water is not used because "it's best", neither it is a toy to play with, you should consider it as a tool to get parameters that you want/need, and first you need to know what are you trying to accomplish.

I think you killed your fish 2 main reasons, you did not remineralize the RO water and you did not acclimate your fish to the new water parameters . too large of a water change. not the fault of RO water... human error.

Yeah yeah yeah. We all took middle school biology and know that deionized water will kill fish. I want to keep fish that live in soft water but my well water is extremely hard. What do I do? If RO water is so terrible, why is it that the only way I have ever had success is when I have started with distilled water? Anybody could use common sense to know that shocking fish with a rapid water chemistry change is bad.

first?

You truly have no idea what you're talking about. Award winning fish keepers use only RO water. It's incredibly common for nano shrimp, discus, rams, coral, etc etc. You're the first I've come across to say it will kill fish.. clearly you didn't have the slightest clue on how to treat it afterwards. It's incredibly easy by the way.

This video is dumb. Not helping other fish keepers forsure

This is a ridiculous and misleading video. Of COURSE you can’t use pure RO water. It’s stupid to do it. You have to mineralize it. Click bait.

Never listen to a man that paints his nails.